How do your cells react to the messages you send them? What is the most healing emotion? Why does the pressure of modern living leave you open to illness? The Biology of Belief is a 3 CD pack that provides answers to these questions and more.

Bruce H Lipton Ph.D. is an eminent cell biologist. Here is a research scientist who is willing to embrace quantum physics & look at how the ‘new science’ sheds light on why we get sick & how we can heal ourselves.

What impressed me about Lipton’s work? Listening to him is like attending an inspiring series of University lectures; he makes the complex accessible to the layman. He provides scientific evidence to support a holistic approach to healthcare.

Here are some of the findings he presents that made the biggest impression on me:
* That the body is either open & receptive or closed & defensive- it can’t be both at once.
* That stress is behind much of the illness in the developed world. Fear closes us down. Lipton explains that the ‘fight or flight’ response was designed to preserve us should a sabre tooth tiger chase us: short term flight to preserve our lives. Many people are now in such a permanent state of stress that the body behaves as if under physical threat nearly all the time. The result of this is that blood is preferentially pumped to the limbs for a speedy getaway & the immune system is virtually shut down. As he puts it why would your body worry about fighting a bacterial infection if it thought you were about to be eaten?
* That love is the emotion that most opens us up & makes us receptive.
* That the subconscious mind can handle 40,000,000 bits of data per second compared to the 40 bits per second handled by the conscious mind (I want to know how they counted that!) That we live our lives from the subconscious for 95%-99% of our time.
* That children are in a state of learning from the womb onwards & are downloading information direct into their subconscious minds until the age of six. This is why children can pick up languages so fast at that age, but it becomes a conscious effort in later years. Children soak up everything that they hear about themselves without the ability to question how valid the messages are. Doesn’t that give us pause for thought as parents?
* That we as adults still believe in & act our lives out from information we absorbed about ourselves as children, unless we have done something to change ‘the tape’ our subconscious is playing.
* That the placebo effect accounts for a substantial percentage of any drug’s action. When clinical trials use dummy pills 35%- 40% of people will report improvements despite there being no active ingredient but belief. Wow! Belief really makes people better!
* That there is a corresponding ‘nocebo’ effect. If someone believes the worst, or is given a poor prognosis they are less likely to get well.

'The Biology of Belief' is packed with illuminating information that would benefit the layman, complementary practitioners and the medical profession. There is enough material in these CDs to spark a revolution in the way we care for our own health and that of others. For example what if Medical Doctors were trained to take advantage of the placebo & nocebo effect instead of dismiss them as anomalies. Another sugar pill anyone?

The Biology of Belief is also available as a book. I reviewed the Audio CD set: